Its 100 days since the NZ Labour Party elected Andrew Little as its leader. What an inspired decision that has turned out to be! Little has galvanised the party, united the caucus and looks set to be the next PM. How has he turned Labour around?

Carmel Sepuloni’s mother has had charges of benefit fraud being laid against her. Andrew Little has done the sensible thing and stood down her as its social development spokesperson. While I’m sure that we will still get the dribbling trolls, this is how potential conflicts of interest should be handled. Updated.

Yesterday the families lost only a small bit of the battle for justice at Pike in an application to get some of the documentation on the Peter Whittall decision. It is clear from the decision that the process of filing itself caused MBIE to agree to release a number of the key documents.

National counterattack line on Iraq is now out and about, courtesy of National’s tester and parrot of lines – National pollster David Farrar at Kiwiblog. It consists of two contradictory lines about Labour. Also neither line is true. But they are just there for the ‘journalists’ to mindlessly repeat in the evening news.

The Electoral Commission has now released individual returns of donations and electoral expenses. And the Donghua Liu donation appears in Jamie-Lee Ross’s return. But the vast majority of electorate campaigns recorded head office donations and the overwhelming impression is that cabinet club donations are collected centrally and then distributed. So what happened with the Liu donation?

John Key’s frothing exhortation to Andrew Little in Parliament to “get some guts” reminds one of opera’s famous Duke of Plazatoro “who led his regiment from behind, he found it less exciting.” Key’s not going to Iraq – our soldiers are the ones in danger.

National engages in Auckland’s Gay Pride parade by sending two MPs who voted against marriage equality and an Auckland Councillor who on Facebook calls a young man who pointed this out as a “little c*ck”. Way to blow relations with the gay and lesbian community. Update: And Linda Cooper has apologised, sort of …

National is letting the regions wither. None more so than (Labour voting) Dunedin, with the closure of the Hillside Workshop, the underfunding of Dunedin Hospital, and the planned closure of the agricultural research center at near-by Invermay. Check out Dunedin North MP David Clark’s video update on Invermay.

Yesterday’s Herald revealed that Donghua Liu made a second donation to National in 2013 which was repaid to him after last year’s election. A brief timeline was provided but in the interests of greater understanding I thought a fuller timeline would be helpful.

It will soon be four years to the minute since the most destructive and deadly Canterbury / Christchurch earthquake. Condolences to the friends and families of the dead. Greetings to all who lived through it and remember.

The Herald announced today that Donghua Liu donated to National the sum of $25,000 in 2013. But the National return for donations in that year, signed on April 30, 2014, do not include this donation and Lee-Ross did not put it in his declaration of pecuniary interests. Maurice Williamson resigned on May 1 2014 for his attempting to affect a police prosecution of Donghua. But the story broke earlier.

by Michael Roberts Recently Noah Smith pointed out that “Modern macro-economists think that recessions and booms are random fluctuations around a trend. These fluctuations tend to die out — a deep recession leads to a fast recovery, and a big expansion tends… ...

Danyl has some thought-provoking comments about the Herald’s analysis of electoral donations: MPs and other political insiders get really upset if you suggest to them that this is all basically political corruption. Partly this is down to their massive egos. MPs don’t think… ...

The minimum wage rose by 50 cents this month from 14.25 to 14.75. While it’s a small step towards ensuring minimum workers get a fair share, it’s important to remember that real wages only rose 1.5% while productivity rose by… ...

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Matt Nippert and the data journalism team at the Herald are uploading all of the electoral donations and crowdsourcing an analysis of it. All sorts of interesting things are cropping up. Like this: New Labour MP Stuart Nash was bankrolled… ...

Watching the news with my five year-old last week, he was asking about sending soldiers to Iraq. He listened to my school-boy appropriate summation and said, "weeeelll, I don't like to shoot people, but on the other hand I do… ...

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Image credit: Dear Kitty. Some blog There are now over 300 blogs on the list, although I am weeding out those which are no longer active or have removed public access to sitemeters. (Let me know if I weed out yours by… ...

Our blog on Taxing the Mega-Rich for their Kiwi Hideaways galvanised two reactions from readers – one xenophobic a la the Winston Peters followers, and one enlightened. The enlightened folk recognise that foreign investment, tourism and immigration can all be… ...

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I've already said I oppose the government's decision to send trainers-and-force-protection to Iraq. This post isn't about that decision itself, it is about the flow on effects here at home. Here's why, politically, this issue is about to go from… ...

. . References Fairfax Media: No New Zealand forces to Iraq, says Key NZ Herald: ‘Sending our forces to Iraq is not an easy decision’ – John Key’s full speech Previous in this series That was Then, This is… ...

We’re now in March and for public transport that means one thing – March Madness. It’s called that because a number of factors combine to see usage of buses, trains surge. Those factors include but are not limited to: It’s a 31… ...

I don’t agree that this whole dress trauma we’ve all been through is a privileged distraction from “the issues” or a stupid way to celebrate net neutrality or whatever (though, yay, net neutrality!). In fact, I’m hoping DressGate will be a turning point in… ...

Press Release – New Zealand Fabian Society Jane Kelsey’s recent op-ed in the NZ Herald noted that if TPPA is going to be part of Obamas legacy he will want the deal done soon by June at the latest! She… ...

Press Release – iPredict The New Zealand dollar will reach parity with the Australian dollar in 2015 and there is just over a 50% probability it will do so by the end of June, according to the combined wisdom… ...

There had been a fortnight of fevered buildup. Yet here we are in the aftermath of the February 28 showdown between the new Syriza government in Greece and the European Union “troika” and… no-one seems entirely sure what happened. Did… ...

The Christchurch earthquake was a catastrophe that was national in its impact and significance but that required the people of Christchurch to pay its terrible price. In the four years that have since elapsed, they have had to shoulder the… ...

“An increase of 3.5% in the minimum wage compared with 5.5% increase for politicians is appalling. It is another example of the wealthy looking after themselves and showing no regard for the poor” says Peter Malcolm, National Secretary of Income… ...

When New Zealand adopted the mixed member proportional (MMP) voting system, Parliament had a bunch of choices to make about the detail of its operate.With the Northland by-election, we are temporarily getting a lesson in two of them:That the rules… ...

Every week we read more than we can write about on the blog. To avoid letting good commentary and research fall by the wayside, we’re going to publish weekly excerpts from what we’ve been reading. Cycling in Christchurch, “Show me… ...

The pilot/season one episode 1 of State of Affairs, is a higher quality production than Madam Secretary (I wrote about this and other Hillary Clinton influenced TV fictions in earlier posts) . State of Affairs (SoA) draws fairly innovatively on recent portrayals of female characters with, or… ...

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Tuning Out: Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, and his Chief-of-Staff, Peta Credlin, epitomise that faction of the political class which believes that popular consent is no longer essential to effective governance. The Australian electorate is fast disabusing them of… ...

There are few people who would doubt that digital is becoming an increasingly important component of political campaigns. Sadly I can no longer find the source for this graph, but it’s one that I’ve shown a few times recently to… ...

There were a number of interesting comments this week in relation to intensification in Auckland. The first came from the Reserve Bank Governor Graeme Wheeler talking about how Auckland needs to do more to enable intensification in the city and address NIMBYism to… ...

Press Release – Embassy of Mexico In 2014, Mexico was ranked seventh in the world in the production of animal protein, with a total value of 33 billion US dollars.Mexico: a world leader in livestock farming In 2014, Mexico… ...

Press Release – Grey Power New Zealand With the final negotiations of the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) expected to be taking place in March, and with widespread community concern about threats this secret deal poses to New Zealands sovereignty,… ...

In leading US ally Saudi Arabia public beheadings are state policy The following is the text of a leaflet being produced by Redline blog. As well as appearing in text form below, it will appear as a downloadable leaflet in the… ...

I feel like I’ve woken up in the bizarro episode of Sealab 2021. Asked for comment about the financial situation at the City Council, Gerry Brownlee is happy to give his two cents, which, unsurprisingly, are that the CCC should… ...

The Government will now have to decide between the politically unpopular option of funding Team New Zealand, or the populist option of funding a giant machine of destruction. Former helmsman Dean Barker has vowed today that he will seek revenge… ...

On Monday the city will be hosting the next Auckland Conversations and this one will has the title of Fixing Auckland’s Transport. The discussion will be about the Long Term Plan Auckland is the country’s fastest-growing region with transport considered the single… ...